Writing Fiction

July 30 Journal

Last spring I started a blog called Metawriting which was an attempt to do in public what I usually do in private: write my own editorial comment on the fiction projects I'm working on.

Such "letters to myself" have helped me get through eleven published novels (not to mention the unpublished and unpublishable ones).

Well, I eventually plan to import MetaWriting to TypePad, but in the meantime I'm going to turn Writing Fiction into an occasional journal as well. If you want to know something about the backstory of my two novel projects, by all means visit MetaWriting. If you can't be bothered, here's a quick summary:

Hard Facts for First Novelists

What follows is a chronology of a Canadian novel, from inspiration to final royalty cheque. Writers in the US, UK, and other countries would have essentially the same experience.

October 13, 2001:
You get a brilliant idea for a novel and begin writing at the rate of 1,000 words a day (about four double-spaced manuscript pages).

January 13, 2002:
You complete a novel of 90,000 words (about 350 typed pages).

January 14-21, 2002:
After careful proofreading, you mail to a Toronto publisher on January 21.

January 28, 2002:
Ms. arrives; happens to catch the eye of a senior editor as she passes the slush pile, where unsolicited manuscripts usually await scrutiny and rejection by a junior editor.

February 1, 2002:
Editor phones you, says she wants to do the book and will send you a confirming letter.

Developing Efficient Work Habits

Different writers face different advantages and drawbacks in forming good writing habits. The circumstances of your personal life may make it easy or hard to find writing time, but time itself is not the real issue—it’s habit.

Writing must be something you do regularly, like brushing your teeth. The writer who waits for inspiration will wait even longer for a complete, published novel.

Writing habits flourish best in routine, but the efficient writer also exploits opportunity.

Elements Of A Successful Story

If your novel or short story is going to work, it’s going to need all the right components. Used without imagination or sensitivity, those elements may produce only formula fiction. But, like a good cook with the right materials and a good recipe, you can also create some pleasant surprises.

Many writers, like many good cooks, don’t need to think consciously about what they're throwing in the pot. But as an apprentice you should probably think about how your story matches up with the following suggestions. They all have to do, essentially, with bringing your characters and readers from a state of ignorance to a state of awareness: Can our heroine find happiness as a journalist? We don’t know, but we’ll find out. Can our hero found a family dynasty in the Nevada wilderness? We don’t know, but we’ll find out.

Style: Checklist for Fiction Writers

As you begin to develop your outline, and then the actual text of your novel or short story, you can save time and energy by making sure that your writing style requires virtually no copy editing.

In the narrative:

1. Do any sentences begin with the words “There” or “It”? They can almost certainly benefit from revision. (Compare: There were three gunmen who had sworn to kill him. It was hard to believe. or: Three gunmen had sworn to kill him. He couldn't believe it.)

2. Are you using passive voice instead of active voice? (Compare: Is passive voice being used?) Put it in active voice!

Storyboarding

“Storyboarding” usually means arranging a sequence of images for a film or commercial. But you can storyboard a novel also, and it can be a helpful way to organize the plot.

That’s because we don't normally think plot. We have an idea for a story (immigrant boy founds family dynasty in Nevada wilderness) and a random assortment of mental images (encounter with a grizzly bear, wild ride to rescue son from kidnappers, gorgeous blonde swimming nude in icy stream, showdown with eastern gangsters wanting land for casino). How do we get from these fragments to a coherent plot?

Ten Points on Plotting

1. Nothing should happen at random.
Every element in a story should have significance, whether for verisimilitude, symbolism, or the intended climax. Names, places, actions and events should all be purposeful. To test the significance of an element, ask yourself: Why this place and not another? Why this name and not another? Why this action, this speech, and not others—or none at all?

The answers should be: To persuade the reader of the story’s plausibility; to convey a message about the theme of the story; to prepare the reader for the climax so that it seems both plausible and in keeping with the theme.

2. Plot stems from character under adversity.
A mild-mannered person cannot achieve his goals by an out-of-character action like a violent assault, unless we have prepared the reader for it by revealing a glimpse of some suppressed aspect of his personality that can be plausibly released by stress. And the stress itself must also be plausible, given the circumstances of the story.

The Story Synopsis

The story synopsis or outline can take many forms; it has no rigid format. But the synopsis, like the manuscript, should be double-spaced and highly legible, with frequent paragraphing.

Some synopses cover the whole story, while others supplement a portion of completed manuscript and presuppose the reader’s familiarity with that portion. If you have broken your novel into chapters, that’s a useful way to divide your synopsis also. You may find, however, that what you thought would fit into one chapter will expand into two or three.

The major element of the synopsis, and sometimes the only element, is the narrative.

Usually in present tense:
On a fine spring day in 1923, Lucy Williams applies for a job working for a mysterious millionaire.

Understanding Genre

“Genre” simply means a kind of literature (usually fiction) dealing with a particular topic, setting, or issue. Even so-called “mainstream” fiction has its genres: the coming-of-age story, for example.

In the last few decades, genre in North America has come to mean types of fiction that are commercially successful because they are predictable treatments of familiar material: the Regency romance, the hard-boiled detective novel, the space opera. Some readers, writers and critics dismiss such fiction precisely because of its predictability, and they’re often right to do so.

But even the humblest hackwork requires a certain level of craft, and that means you must understand your genre’s conventions if you are going to succeed—and especially if you are going to convey your message by tinkering with those conventions.

Thoughts About Irony

“Irony” comes from the Greek word “eiron,” meaning a man who makes himself appear less than he is. When Odysseus returned at last from Troy, he appeared to be a ragged beggar, not the rightful King of Ithaca. No one paid attention to him until he revealed himself by stringing his own bow—which none of his wife Penelope’s suitors, or anyone else, had the strength to do. 

So irony is about saying one thing and meaning another. We’re all familiar with one kind of irony: sarcasm. Your mother used to ask if you’d cleaned up your room and you answered: “Of course, mother dear.” The words were perfectly polite, but your tone of voice drove your mother crazy just as you intended.